Germany to Send Ukraine 2,700 Soviet-Made Anti-Aircraft Rockets
Germany will provide Ukraine with 2,700 surface-to-air rockets manufactured in the Soviet Union…
What’s the self life on those rockets? They must be the Twinkies of the munitions world.
I don’t know. And weirdly, I’m not getting an image at the link now.
In any case, they might be 9K34 Strela-3 man-portable, heat-seeking missile that was adopted by the Soviet Union in 1974, and which Wikipedia says is still in service.
Sky News team comes under heavy small-arms fire in their car, and are lucky to escape with their lives.
Bodycam video, and more background and details in the story below.
It would be something if the alleged request by China to delay the invasion by a couple of weeks until the Olympics was over was the cause of things getting bogged down. How would the ground have been if they had started ealrier and avoided some of the early thaw.
I can’t see China having actually being able to plan that ahead, but having Russia test the waters for them to see how the West would react to a neighboring country invasion, whilst staying sort of friendly with russia , at the same time having Russia significantly weakend and possibly have russia have to sell their unwanted by the West oil at a discount and think about having to build gas export pipelines east rather than to europe, also to sell at a buyers price. That’s not a bad outcome for China .
I think they would have had worst problems. From what I understand, they didn’t really give anyone on their own side notice this was going to happen. I mean, OPSEC is important and all, but you need to tell your own people you are planning an invasion so they can prepare.
One thing I’ve heard repeated a bunch is that one of the issue the Russians are having with their tires are because they bought cheap, knockoff Chinese versions. And then left then sitting out without ‘exercising’ them periodically by moving the trucks around…like you need to in order to avoid a lot of the issues they are having.
Not a chance did China foresee any of this. It’s pretty obvious from some of the things they did that they thought Russia would roll through Ukraine and Ukraine would roll over and surrender very quickly. It will be some time before Russia can increase their pipeline capacity to get more, new gas and oil to Russsia. Their current pipelines are all pretty much maxed.
I’m not sure this is a good outcome for China…but it might be for Taiwan if it gets China to rethink its own adventures. I think this is a good taste of what would be in store for them if they tried to take Taiwan, from both the sanctions perspective and how ready their own military really is for something like that. And this is if the US stands aside, which, I seriously doubt we would. Would we really let ANOTHER democracy be crushed at the whim of an autocratic dictatorship while we just watched, helpless, to do anything? I don’t think so…
Yes, agree hence the ’ I cant see it’ part , maybe serendipitous was the word I was needing rather than suggesting some machivellian level of foresight. I think China gets a good sense from this how the west would react , which is good information for them to have and a weakend Russia is not bad. I’d have to say though the potential for cheap oil for them is there , LNG from Yumal , and sure the pipelines would take a very long time, but if Europe turns its back on Russian gas long term, russia has to sell it somewhere .
Maybe better for the " world over a barrel " thread.
Yeah, for frak’s sake, I’m a civilian whose vehicles aren’t “mission critical” but I try to make sure each of them is moved at least once a week and if that stretches to two or three I start fretting. You’d think a freakin’ national military would do at least that well.
Yes, if you want to go cross-country on the Canadian prairies, and the snow pack isn’t too heavy, winter is the best time. Nice and hard, frozen solid.
Our soil, which is similar to what Ukraine has (which is why Ukrainian immigrants were so successful as farmers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba), is heavy clay soils. It absorbs water and expands; just walking through it in spring cakes your boots and slows you down terribly. I can’t see how vehicles could afford to go off-roading at this time of year.
The way to deal with it is not build your plans on trying to drive through it in the spring.
If a neutral country imprisons Russian soldiers, that is an act of war. That would be ecactly what Putin would love, for NATO countries to give him a legitimate casus belli.
Even setting laws of war aside, what would be the domestic Polish, Romanian or Hungarian law that allows those states to detain individuals who have not attacked those countries, and have not committed any criminal offence in them?
I was thinking about a situation where land is set aside for Ukrainians to run the prisons. Kind of like the US military bases in other countries.
But those land bases would still be under the sovereignty of Poland, Rumania, etc., so Russia would still have a valid cause of war. Those US foreign bases don’t cease to be part of Germany, Italy, etc. It’s just that those countries sign agreements with the US to allow them to operate there, and that US law will apply to those troops.
TOR stands for “The Onion Router”, which is named such for how its encrypted packets are layered like an onion.
I always thought it was because the packets were like ogres…
I always assumed they were just really big fans of Scifi… I wonder how often Tor books has to explain to people that no, they’re not that TOR.
Given the trouble they’re having in Ukraine, I can’t imagine Russia wants to fight NATO.
I think they were. 
I was just riffing on the onion thing (ogres are like onions, etc etc).
IIRC, in WWII, Switzerland, a neutral country, interred combatants who came to Switzerland. Airmen diverting to a neutral country is different from a belligerent country sending prisoners there, but a neutral country can imprison foreign combatants.
Imprisons? Who said anything about imprisons? When a neutral power takes on the detainees of a belligerent power, that’s called internment, albeit normally something reserved for sick or wounded POWs who can’t receive adequate treatment from the detaining power.
But the scenario was not internment by a neutral country, but POWs brought there under Ukrainian control, and the NATO countries allowing Ukraine to keep them under guard there.